


Proving a Point

by narsus



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Depression, Episode Related, F/M, Introspection, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lies when Joyce asks him why he went back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proving a Point

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Endeavour belongs to Mammoth Screen, Masterpiece, ITV and others.

“Why did you go back to Oxford?”

Joyce’s words come back to haunt him from time to time. Often when he least expects. Not that it’s too difficult to ignore them. The echo of a solemnly asked question isn’t the trouble. The problem is his hollow reply.

“A policeman goes where he’s sent.”

He’d even followed it up with a false smile that felt, and had probably looked, like a grimace. He hadn’t been fooling anyone. He’s quite certain that she’d been looking for something to give him away, some admission, some expression of discontent, that would allow her to tell him he could always come back home. To hell with whatever Gwen had to say about it which was certain to be plenty. She’d been hoping he’d give in, admit that it was all a mess, that everything was falling apart, and that, deep down, all he really wanted was to come home. Except, as far as he was concerned, he didn’t have a home to go to.

He hadn’t gone back to Oxford, willingly, for the same reason that it was always harbouring its fair share of retired old dons at least. Having lived all their lives in the colleges it made a certain sense that they’d all return to die. And the ones that didn’t die as soon as they’d expected instead wrote books that culminated in that final chapter that spoke of longing for the end. He hadn’t come to die. Nothing so dramatic had been on his mind when the announcement had been made. But, at least so he can admit to himself, he’d still been trying to prove a point. He may not have been able to live out his life in college but, once upon a time, he’d hoped to. He’d dreamed of those gothic spires as an escape. Oxford had been a city of potential, of classical academic dreams, a world whole and entire unto itself. He could have been someone there, another black gowned academic, ploughing his way through essays and papers, and writing an ever expanding library of textbooks. It wouldn’t have mattered that the rest of the world might have called his arena a specialist interest. He could have cultivated his dreams safely, carefully, beneath those august spires. That had been his design, his desperate, romantic, vision for his future. So, in a sense, perhaps he had come back to, at least, burry his dreams.

There’ll be no Doctor Morse sitting at high table in the evening now. No junior don of the same name hurrying to catch up with the Master, calling after him that he’ll be late for drinks on a Wednesday evening because he had to supervise the choir, no casual use of the Master’s Christian name when they’re both drunk on far too much sherry in his rooms. No Cyril Morse frowning at eloquent speeches that mean nothing, and stating as much in his broad Yorkshire accent, from an honoured guest position at the table. No Mrs Susan Morse shaking her head fondly at her husband’s antics. Perhaps then also, no affair to be had with someone entirely inappropriate, no horrifying moment when he gasps out “Arthur” instead of “Susan” in their bed. No future with grey hair and a sturdy middle built on dark ale and long-pondered crosswords. Perhaps then it’s better that way. Somehow he’s already lived long enough for his childish dreams of a perfect, provincial, future to melt away into the heady anticipation of scandal and insular college drama. All of which probably speaks more to the content of his character than anything else. He can’t be sure but he is fairly certain that most aspiring young dons don’t foster fantasies of having an affair with the master of their college. But then he’s always been a little odd in that respect.

Nevertheless, fruitless fantasies aside, he’d had to go back. He’d had to, otherwise he might have spent the rest of his life pondering everything that had eluded him. Without going back to look upon those venerable stones he might easily have constructed a fantasy of Oxford in his head, that grew larger and more terrifying with distance. Carshall New Town isn’t all that far but in his mind the distance would have grown to impossible proportions. He might have succeeded there, only to be forever haunted by the alternative future that had escaped, that he hasn’t been able to grasp for. Better to come back now, to the scene of, as his father had so aptly put it, his foolishness. Better to return and stare down the dreaming spires in their full glory on a misty morning. To stand on the cobbles, in the shadow of Lonsdale’s gate, and feel oddly unresponsive to its splendour.

The city of dreaming spires had been a city of possibilities. Those possibilities, those other paths that he might have taken, now will no longer be realised, at least not by him. He owes it to his own broken dreams to give them fair burial. To leave them scattered across the cobblestones like ash scattered to the four winds. Like the glimmering motes of light that seemed to catch the dust rising up between the tomes of the Bod. Perhaps they might even be dreams and ambitions worthy enough of others, of a million students who come to Oxford to fulfil the same cycle as generations before them. Someone else will take his place amongst the august company of dons, someone else will marry their college sweetheart, someone else may, even, have an illicit affair with a senior fellow in his stead. There will always be someone else to replace him leaving no gap in the continuity of academic history. Leaving behind no memory, sunk into the medieval stones, of a boy who was robbed of his faith in the blissful future, who has had his heart broken and has returned to the city of dreams to find that he no longer has one.

**Author's Note:**

> “But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
> I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
> Thread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
> 
> \- Yeats “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”


End file.
